Love Hard

Love Hard is a work of docu-portraiture about BDSM and intimacy. In its inquiry into the loves and lives of 5 subjects, it presents unique, articulate, and thoughtful perspectives on how kink can function in our lives – as a practice of art or intimacy, as a mode of expression or release, as an iteration or an obliteration of self, as a way to play, a way to fuck, a way to love, a way to be ordinary.

It began with the premise that BDSM, viewed simply and without stigma, is a mode of relating – to oneself, to others, to the built and natural worlds. The filmmakers studied the subjects from a distance and up close, and approached them delicately. The result is a collection of words, images, and sounds which, when woven together, address BDSM from philosophical, psychological, physiological, artistic, sexual, emotional, and historical perspectives.

These people play hard and deeply, and the insights they gather in their ‘travels to the borderlands of what’s socially acceptable’ are revelatory, and perhaps have something to say to us about love.